About smartvote

smartvote is an innovative online platform, which matches voters to candidates and parties that share their policy positions. Since 2003, smartvote has informed voters in over 200 elections throughout Switzerland and Europe.

How smartvote works

1. Candidates

Candidates answer questions on a wide range of current policy issues.

2. Voters

Voters answer the same questions on the smartvote website.

3. Matching

Voters receive a ranked list of candidates & parties that best match their political profile.

Contributions to civic education

Voter mobilization & engagement

smartvote has been shown to increase political participation and voter turnout.

Issue-Based discourse

smartvote promotes an issue-based discourse, by focusing on differences in policy positions, not ideology or character.

Candidate Transparency

smartvote allows voter’s to learn about candidates’ positions on a wide range of important policy issues, therefore building a more informed and engaged electorate.

Some of our special features

Data visualization: smartspider

One of our strong points is the straightforward visualization of complex information. The smartspider uses 8 axes on major policy fields, to visually compare a voter’s political profile with a candidate’s.

Data visualization: smartmap

Our smartmap is another strong visual tool for comparing political positions. It shows the positions of all the candidates and the voter in a two-dimensional space.

Social media sharing

Candidates and voters alike can share their profiles, smartspiders and matching results easily on Facebook, Twitter and via email.

Election day reminder

smartvote reminders bring voters back to their original matching results, encourage voters to fill out the questionnaire again and see if their position has changed, and motivate voters to go out and vote!

New opportunities for campaign coverage

Data for social science researchers

The anonymized data collected with our tool is ideal for social and political research. Our platforms are compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Services à la carte

smartvote provides the technical infrastructure and expertise gained from 15 years of running online candidate-voter matching platforms. Please contact us, if you are interested in learning more about the services we provide: info@ smartvote.org

Ready to use platform, inline frames & API

We provide a ccutting-edge online platform for matching candidates and voters (VAA), which is fully responsive and includes innovative features. Additionally, we have experience in providing inline frames and APIs to partners that prefer to integrate the platform directly into their own website.

Consulting & advising

Customization & integration

Our platform can be adapted to a wide range of electoral systems and is well-suited for local, regional and national elections. Founded in Switzerland, a country with four national languages, our platforms are designed to accommodate multilingual candidates and voters.

Examples of Integration into Swiss media websites

About us

smartvote is a non-profit and non-partisan organization based in Bern, the capital of Switzerland. We pride ourselves on consistent transparency and scientifically based methods. Our team is made up of political scientists, specialized in E-democracy, big data analysis, and journalism (Politools), and supported by a local, innovative IT company (soom-IT).

Key facts about smartvote

Used by 1 in 5 voters in Switzerland

Achieves up to 85% candidate participation

Hosted over 200 elections at the local, regional, national & international level (in Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, and Scotland as well as for the European Union and others)

Try smartvote out yourself: visit our current platform for the Luxembourg General Election at www.smartwielen.lu

15 years of experience in helping voters find candidates and parties that share their positions!

References

“The next crucial reform is to help voters make informed choices … Switzerland offers the best example of the next step: its smartvote system presents a list of policy choices with which you can agree or disagree, then compares your answers with the policies of the parties and candidates contesting the election. It produces a graphic showing whose position most closely matches your interests.”George Monbiot in the Guardian, January 25, 2017